Arms and the Boy by Wilfred Owen — Read

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade / How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; / Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash; / And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads / Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.

Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth, / Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.

There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple; / And God will grow no talons at his heels, / Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.